Chapter Ethan
ETHAN
The power died right as they got the long dresser pushed against the front door.
There wasn’t time to barricade the back.
With a hiss and a click, the lamp on their nightstand went out, followed an instant later by the lights outside.
This time, it all felt final. There was no faint half-light. No gloaming.
Darkness came over the motel, thick and permanent.
“He killed the generator,” Hunter whispered. As if Ethan couldn’t guess.
Hunter pressed something cold and metal into Ethan’s hand. The Python he’d stolen from the diner in Turner. Hunter held the shotgun they’d brought from Ellersby. He was wheezing hard.
He whispered, “Watch the back door.”
Ethan had expected the darkness to bring a new wave of SHRIEKS, but when the lights went out for good, he heard instead something far worse: a soft rush of feet, a great rustle of many wings, a strange animal hiss that started in the parking lot and echoed around the motel.
The hiss felt coordinated, steady, almost rhythmic.
It made Ethan think of the pulse of sonar, or the whistle of deer hunters circling their prey.
His eyes had adjusted well enough to the dark for Ethan to make out the shape of the back door. Hunter pressed his back to Ethan’s. He was barely breathing.
Ethan heard a creak of wood behind him, directly outside their front door. He heard a long, sustained hiss. It was echoed by another hiss, a third.
At least three of those things were here, right outside their room.
A long talon tapped the wood of the door. Another tapped at the bars on the window.
Hiss.
Instinct told Ethan what was happening: those things were debating if their prey might be inside.
He heard another tap, this one against the wood of the back door. There hadn’t been time to barricade that door. Nothing held it closed but a dead bolt and chain.
The creature outside tapped again.
Again.
Again.
Ethan didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. Didn’t make a sound. Hunter was just as silent. They waited, their ears straining. Ethan’s senses had become so sharp he could count every fiber of his denim sleeve just from touch, feel the weight of the atmosphere on his every individual hair.
The taps stopped. The hissing. Ethan heard steps move up the porch. When there was another hiss, it sounded like it came from outside room 8 next door.
The creatures were moving on. Ethan almost—almost—risked a sigh of relief.
And then he heard a new noise, much closer. It was a wet rattle, a warning: a carburetor gasping for air. With a rush of cold sweat, Ethan knew what that sound was. It was coming from Hunter’s lungs.
Hunter tensed against Ethan’s back. As softly as he could, he took one hand off the shotgun and thumped his chest.
The hissing outside stopped.
A creak of wood from the porch, another: they were coming back.
Hunter tried to hold his breath. Ethan felt the man thump his chest again, desperate now.
A hiss, directly outside the door.
Hunter coughed.
SHRIEKS came up from every direction, so loud Ethan’s mind clenched up.
And then, through the cough, he heard Hunter say, “Run.”